LCD plug in causes crash on resume from hibernate

[Promixis]

Mike,

Girder is crashing on resume from hibernate and this is only happening when the lcd plugin is enabled. Just wondering

1. Does the plugin support hibernate

2. How to trouble shoot this.

Mike

[vfrjim]

I know this reply is late, but I just configured the LCD plugin for Girder and Hibernate fine in WinXP with SP1, I know that I had problems with hibernation with LCD Smartie, that is why I tried the LCD plugin with Girder.

Jim

[Chesley]

I'm having a problem with LCD crashing on the first attempt to write to it following a resume from hibernate. I see some similar issues posted previously, but no resolution.

I've tried disabling the LCD plugin on suspend and standby and re-enabling it on resume, but that doesn't seem to do it.

Any suggestions/help would be much appreciated. This is the one thing keeping hibernate from working on my system.

Thanks.

[Promixis]

I no longer have this problem but I am now using a different VFD. What model are you using and what is the interface?

[Chesley]

I'm using the parallel interface. (I have a case from Kanam that comes with a built-in VFD.)

[Promixis]

That was my problem as well - the parallel interface.

I think I may had this working by Closing the display then disabling the plugin and then hibernating.

I think the problem is more with the dlport and not the lcd plugin...

Hopefully this will work. If you are really desperate, you could replace the vfd with a matrix orbital product - which is what I did. The paralell display is very slow at updating.

Mike

[Chesley]

Unfortunately, that didn't do it. I did LCD close and then plugin device disable. Same behavior.

I also verified that it works fine with the simulated LCD, but crashes with the parallel interface.

Thanks for the suggestions, though.

[MMcM]

I can add something to close the display on a suspend power event. Should it do this unconditionally, or does it need to be an option? That is, does anyone have the display staying on while the machine is off and that is what you want?

The device connection is opened on demand, so I do not think any explicit action will be needed on resume. I take it that either AlarmTimer events stop while suspended or there is no timed display. In any case, nothing special is needed there from the LCD plug-in.

[Chesley]

I did try closing LCD on suspend, and it still crashed on resume from hibernation. (I'd have been quite content with that as a work-around if it had worked.)

[wnpublic]

I have the same issue with the LCD plugin crashing on resume from s3 standby. I would love to see a fix. My preference would be unconditionally closing the display on a suspend power event, but as long as it works when the machine wakes up, I'm happy :lol: Thanks for a great plugin.

[Promixis]

In the next version of girder you will be able to load/unload plugins. This may solve this problem...

[wnpublic]

Interesting. So that I understand, your notion is that this could solve the problem by being able to unload the LCD plugin on standby? (I'm dumb).

[Promixis]

Thats my thought but I don't know if it will work!

[Chesley]

There was a suggestion in this thread that the next Girder release would have a load/unload feature that would make allow the parallel LCD plug-in to survive hibernation. (Though I had thought you could already load/unload...) Does 3.3 have this?

I'll happily pay the shareware fee if it does.

[Promixis]

Yes it does,

LoadPlugin (number)
EnablePlugin (number)
DisablePlugin (number)
UnloadPlugin (number)

I have no idea if that will solve the problem though :(. Please post your results!

Get the plugin number from the setup/plugins page.

Mike

[Chesley]

Nope, that didn't do it. I get the same crashes as soon as it comes out of hibernation and tries to write to the display via the LCD plugin.

BTW, what's the difference between the new LoadPlugin/UnloadPlugin, and the old enable/disable device?

This is still the one thing that's not working for me on Girder. Without hibernation, I have to leave it on all the time for PVR functions.

[Promixis]

Unload removes it from memory.

Disable just turns its off.

[wnpublic]

Unfortunate that 3.3 does not fix this issue. I'm in the same boat as Chesley..

[Chesley]

I just tried using LCD Smartie, and it seems to have the same problem. Which makes me wonder if the bug is actually in PortIO, which I believe both use.

[Promixis]

Just is also my understanding - its Port IO

[MMcM]

Version 2.9 adds explicit suspend / resume support for standby / hibernate. It will remember what is on the screen, including custom characters and marquee, and close the screen. Everything is restored when the machine comes back.

This version is much more careful to see that DLPORTIO.DLL is completely unloaded from memory when the display is closed. This is the best that the plug-in can do. Hopefully it will prevent a crash. I do not have the necessary hardware to test this myself.

You can dowload version 2.10 from SourceForge. Let me know if it helps.